Willa Cather Books

As the previous reviewers have noted, this is a clever, wonderfully written book that makes sense of Cather and mincemeat of decades of politically oriented criticism. It is disheartening to read of all the absurdity that has been written about Cather (and, by extension, so many other wonderful writers)and realize the amount of dreadful criticism, narrow thinking and senseless writing that is being generated and propagated by the academic presses. This book is a breath of fresh air, showing that the Emperor of Academia really has no clothes.

With great economy and acerbic wit Joan Acocella takes on the Amazons of feminist theory and vanquishes the lot. Her research is detailed and her sources impressive, and for once we have a critic who loves literature and the people who make it more than the ideologies they represent or the dogmas they profess. Acocella skewers anti-scholarly scholarship and retrieves one of America's great writers from the dark grip of the dogmatists. Her account of Cather's early life and preparation is concise and filled with understanding; what's more in the briefest space she tells the story of that life in the context of the age and gives us Cather's achievement without the burden of spurious literary theories. Students of literature and literary criticism must read this as an example of good writing and clear thinking. Excellent bibliography, marvelous notes!

Joan Acocella has written a cogent and witty review of past and current Cather criticism. If you are tired of critics imposing their political agendas on Cather's work (whether from the left or the right) you will enjoy this book. My only criticism: this was originally a New Yorker article, and although it's been expanded, it is still rather slim. More, Joan, we want more!

Joan Acocella casts a witty and penetrating eye on Cather's wildly varying treatment at the hands of both right-wing and left-wing literary critics. This book is a must-read for anyone who's weary of pretentious, precious academic criticism that strays alarmingly far from the text in order to claim an author for a particular political camp. Acocella is a wonderful writer; every thought, every sentence in this book is a delight. Best of all, she makes you want to re-read Cather, which of course can only make you happy.

In a lucid, readable style Acocella explains how in the field of Cather studies, common sense has left the building and the lunatic fringe has set up camp. To many, it does not matter how fine a author Cather was but whether she was enough of a lesbian and leftist to qualify as an Approved Writer for the academy. Acocella explains with great panache how one can be a Republican and self-styled old maid like Cather and still be a great American writer. Riveting reading.

Cather, who is famous for the lyrical quality of her sensitive writing, does not disappoint in this spectacular novel. She creates a rich and sensitive tapestry of human experience, spinning a yarn of struggle, revelation, love, cruelty, adaptation, and ultimate triumph. She never yields to the temptations of fatuous romanticism or trite platitudes. This book is an experience that transports the reader into another time in another place, but then provides the most insightful among us with the material needed to extrapolate from this experience, and apply it to other places in other times. This is a uniquely American masterpiece that will resonate with those who may have grown out of spy thrillers and whodunits.

To be honest, the title was not one that I would have picked up on my own, and the book was recommended to me several times before I decided to read it. (You can't tell a book by it's Title) Worthy of all of it's critical acclaim, I have read this novel over several times, not only for it's splendid story line, but for the sheer brilliance of it, each time marveling at it's beauty and style. Though it deals with religion, it does it tastefully, openly, and allows the reader to see the underside of the human element that powers it.

Though all men may be "created equal", their characters are not, and this story is powerful in that regard as it exposes men of the cloth that are there simply as users of others, as opposed to the devoted, the sincere who's life work has been striven to the good.

The novel is timeless. The story unfolds in France and Italy, is about two boyhood friends who study for the priesthood together and subsequently end up doing their life's work together in the wild, open country of the New Mexico and Arizona frontiers. This work spans their entire lives, and the adventures, trials and hardships are many. The artistry that Willa Cather employs as she takes her reader through the magnificent, lonely expanses of sage and cactus, to the Mexican people in remote areas; the lawless exiles who hope to disappear into it's wilderness, is all accomplished as though a painter is at work beside her, shaping her words into visuals, makes this work one of her best, in my view.

I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as, having re-read it, I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. All the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

I concur with the wonderful review written by Lawyeraau (see below) this novel is truly one of the treasures of American literature. I can't recommend this one enough. Willa Cather spins a tale of such beauty and charm about friendship and unconditional love between the two main characters in the novel - Antonia Shimerda and Jim Burden. It is a coming of age tale that focuses on the positive aspects of the human condition. All of the characters suffer loss, and incredible hardships at times. Yet, unconditional love and the friendships they form with each other save the day and win out in the end. The bottom line, we need more stories like this one! Novels that focus on the positive, rather than the negative. This is a charming little story that really has a great message as well. That friendship and love really does conquer all. After you are done with the story, you can't help but feel a bit saddened that it is over. It is such a great book that it makes you almost wish that it never ended. Antonia is one of my favorite female fictional characters of all time.

Where have all the Willa Cathers of the world gone? The elegant and vivid way she writes makes this novel feel almost like one is reading a long epic poem. I also really adore the colorful way she uses words to describe the rough Nebraska terrain. Cather is simply one of our greatest American writers and this is one of her finest works. It is my personal favorite because of it's charm and eternal lesson of the value of friendship and the importance of unconditional love. This is one of those novels that truly does make you feel happy to be alive and helps to reaffirm ones belief in humanity.

This is a good gift book for a grandparent who enjoyed reading the biography of Abraham Lincoln. Great condition, easy to read.

I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

In 1882, when author Willa Cather was nine years-old, her family left their home in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and moved to Nebraska, near the settler country in Red Cloud where they farmed a homestead. Ms. Cather, often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West, frequently drew on her memories of prairie culture and her own personal experiences. She wrote about the themes closest to her heart. Of primary importance was the drama of the immigrant struggling to survive in a new world, epitomized here in "My Antonia." In this extraordinary novel, Miss Cather weaves together the story of Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl from Bohemia who represents the optimism, determination and pure grit that newcomers to America needed to make a successful life, and that of American-born Jim Burden, our narrator.

Burden, a successful and cultured East-coast lawyer, is returning to his childhood home in Blackhawk, Nebraska for a visit. On the long train ride, he reminisces with an unnamed friend about the place where they had both grown up and about the people they knew - especially their dear friend Antonia, "who seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood."

When young Jim Burden was orphaned at age ten, he left his native Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm, just outside of Blackhawk, Nebraska. At almost the same time that Jim arrived, the Shimerda family settled on their homestead. Mrs. Shimerda had argued effectively for a move to America so that the children, especially Ambrosch, the eldest son, would have the chance to make a better life for themselves, with more possibilities of moving up in the social hierarchy and of acquiring wealth. The Bohemian newcomers were the Burden's closest neighbors. Fourteen year-old Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter became a close friend of Jim's. He was immediately drawn to her warmth and friendliness. When Antonia's father, a sensitive, refined man, discovered that Jim was educated he asked the boy to teach his daughter to speak English. "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Án-tonia!" he told/asked Mrs. Burden. Together the two young people worked the land and explored the glorious prairie. And Antonia began to learn English.

Unfortunately, Antonia's studies came to an end with her father's tragic suicide. The man missed his native land terribly and was not able to accept his family's extreme poverty or the demands of his wife and son. When he lost his only friends, he sunk into a deep depression from which he was not able to escape. After Mr. Shimerda's death, Antonia had to work even harder, performing the heaviest, most physically demanding chores, just to keep the farm from going under. She was not able to go to school with Jim, and began to slowly lose the refined ways she had learned from her dad.

The author describes Antonia's life as Jim perceives it, and from information he gathers from others about the long periods when he did not have contact with her. Their widely different positions in society dictated their life choices and their fortunes. And their lives, their personal histories, parallel the changes and the transformation of the Great Plains. When Antonia and Jim explored the Nebraskan wilderness, it was a wilderness, as far as the eye could see. "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating..." And, "I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it." When Jim makes his return trip by train, years later, everything had changed.

Willa Cather's prose is straightforward, the narrative is deceptively simple and crystal clear. Her characters are complex and the wonderful, richly textured descriptions of the landscape and life on the plains make reading the novel pure pleasure. The author also captures the interior landscape of her characters with great perception and sensitivity. This is a great work of fiction which depicts a people, and a place in time, which only remain on the pages of a book, preserved vividly by Willa Cather.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as 'My Antonia.'"
JANA

I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

Got the material in a timely fashion. It was easy to locate and order...and it was affordable.

I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as, having re-read it, I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. All the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

This book is a look inside a very famous musical family, the Menuhins, and a long-term friendship between two very different women.

The Menuhin family contained three world-class musical prodigies, when most families would be happy with just one prodigy. Yehudi, the famous one, was considered the greatest musical talent of the 20th Century. Hephzibah, his sister, usually accompanied him on the piano. Then there was sister Yaltah, also a pianist. According to people who know about such things, she was the most talented of them all.

The family was run by Marutha, their mother, a cold, domineering woman. Yaltah was told, more than once, that the only reason she was alive was because of a broken diaphragm. Yaltah and Hephzibah were allowed piano lessons for the sole purpose of attracting a husband. When it came to marriage, all that mattered, according to Marutha, was whether or not he came from a well-to-do family; love was irrelevant. Yaltah's first "arranged" marriage lasted about 6 months. The family lived in Paris, because that is where the great musicians were. The rise of Hitler in the 1930s forced a move to Manhattan, where they met Willa Cather.

She was a novelist and newspaper writer from the American Midwest, who became good friends with the family and became the children's teacher (there was no regular school for the Menuhin's). Marutha kept the children out of the public eye as much as possible (their educational walks with Cather began at 6:00 AM). As the years went on, the friendship between Yaltah and Willa grew. Willa helped Yaltah deal with her mother's unfeeling personality, and Yaltah ended up inspiring several of Willa's later novels.

For Yaltah's second marriage, in the early 1940s, she eloped with an Army lawyer named Ben Rolfe. Her parents never accepted him as part of the family. The marriage ended after a number of years, partly because of his jealousy over her musical career. It was only after 2 more not-very-pleasant marriages, and her moving to London, that in the last few years of her life, she regained something like the musical career she had when she was younger.

Here is a very personal look inside a famous musical family, written by an "insider." (the author is Yaltah's son). It is very much worth reading, not just for classical music fans, or fans of 20th Century female novelists, but for everyone.

Los Angeles author Lionel Rolfe has written in The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin & Willa Cather a moving biography of his mother Yaltah Menuhin, sister of famed violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and her relationship with novelist Willa Cather. Yaltah like Mendelssohn's sister Fanny and Mozart's sister Nannerl showed brilliance as a musician early but was discouraged by family members and always overshadowed by her famous brother. Rolfe looks closely at what it takes for a woman to overcome the obstacles put in front of her having a career as a touring concert pianist.

Rolfe's mother Yaltah was actively discouraged by her parents Moshe and Marutha who were Russian Jewish emigres to San Francisco where Moshe was superintendant of city's Hebrew schools. All three children of their-- Yehudi, the oldest; Hephzibah, the middle girl; and Yaltah, the youngest-were musical prodigies. At first the mother had decided the daughters wouldn't have musical careers, but then mother relented, seeing that Hephzibah could perform well in the secondary role as accompanist on the piano when her brother played his violin. The parents then that Yaltah was too "fragile" to be a touring musician.

If you compare the three Menuhin prodigies with Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn, the parallels are striking. The Mendelssohns of Hamburg, Germany, like the Menuhins of San Francisco, California, were an extremely intellectual Jewish family and both mothers were music teachers. Fanny Mendelssohn in the 1830s and Yaltah Menuhin in the 1930s had family members telling them to give up before they started.

In fact, the Menuhins were on the 20th century version of a tradition of producing prodigies going back the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Rolfe's descriptions of how the elder Menuhins educated their three children are almost a manual on how to produce prodigies. So in many ways this is a western Jewish story-how Eastern European traditions were carried on in San Francisco. Moshe was a descendant of the Lubavitch Schneersohn dynasty, one of the great Hasidic religious dynasties of Eastern Europe. Rolfe's descriptions of the Menuhins in Los Gatos, California, in the later 1930s having intrigues over who their three teenager children would be allowed to court and then marry almost sound like the intrigues of a Hassidic or European court, but music was at the center rather than religion or politics. The parents had decided that their youngest Yaltah should be married off young to a rich husband.

What's critical in his mother's life, Rolfe argues, is her relationship with this independent older woman novelist Willa Cather. Rolfe retells the fascinated story how his grandparents educated all three children at home, convincing Willa Cather to be the Shakespeare tutor for the three Menuhin children. Though the Yaltah and Willa were together only in the last decade of Cather's life, Rolfe shows this short but intense relationship was important for both. The Menuhins weren't in the Russian shtetl (village) but in the 1930s America, and Cather was no ordinary shtetl tutor.

Rolfe argues that Yaltah was the inspiration for the heroine of the novella Lucy Gayheart, which Willa Cather was writing at the same time she regularly saw the Menuhins. Further, Rolfe argues that Yaltah thought Aunt Willa was the mother that her own mother had never been. Yaltah got from Aunt Willa the image of an independent woman artist, not controlled by her parents or a husband. Indeed, Yaltah alternated between obeying her dominating parents and rebelling against them. Rolfe captures that moment when immigrant's daughters were insisting on more freedoms in America.

It does seem likely that Aunt Willa in part inspired Yaltah's rebellion. Though Yaltah at sixteen allowed her parents to pick her first husband just as Nannerl Mozart, Mozart's sister, allowed her father to pick her husband, Yaltah's first marriage only lasted six months. At twenty-one Yaltah rebelled and chose her second husband, a young Jewish soldier/lawyer.

Concerning husbands, there is another difference between Yaltah Menuhin and Fanny Mendelssohn. Fanny Mendelssohn did get the support her husband William Hensel to publish her composition and performed in the weekly family musical salons. In contrast, Yaltah Menuhin, despite lack of support from all her husbands, performed in public concerts. Though Yaltah Menuhin never had the stellar musical career of her older brother Yehudi, she did perform piano in concerts from aged 30 to 80 in North America, Europe, and England.

In Los Angeles during the 1950s where Yaltah lived with her second husband and two sons she regularly took part in the "Evenings on the Roof" series performing the work of many new composers. Again, she was a woman who stood on her own two feet like her Aunt Willa. Rolfe's book is a moving story of a fascinating woman who in order to become a musician overcomes numerous obstacles.

This landmark work is an insightful and brilliant analysis of the work of Cather. Valuable for Cather fans and newbies alike!

As a student of literature, I found this to be an insightful and delightful investigation into the works of one of America's least understood authors. Willa Cather's works, as Middleton points out, lead directly into the Modernist genre. Jo Ann Middleton has constructed an excellent analysis of this too often overlooked American author. Drawing on Cather's uniques writing style, Middleton explains Cather's techniques and style in a manner that is beneficial for literature scholar and neophyte alike.

This is quite simply the most breathtaking performance by a narrator that I've ever heard. This collection of truly great American short stories, most of which were written in the last 75 years, ranges throughout the country...north, south, east and west. It is just unbelievable to me that any single person could sit down and perform all these stories with an all-encompassing depth of comprehension and a complete mastery of accents...and then on top of that to provide absolutely believable voice characterizations that are totally distinct from the voice of the narrator. This guy Griffin can do a completely convincing child or woman, and then in the next breath he's either back to the narrator voice or that of a male character. I teach literature classes at the high school and junior college level and I have received outstanding results in getting my students to listen to these fine stories without complaint where previously I had to beg and cajole them to read. These recordings have engendered many a lively classroom discussion. The music and sound effects are perfect, never intruding...always in the background when you most appreciate them. You'll never hear Faulkner done better than here. Absolutely fabulous work!

Stories by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Fitz-James O'Brien, Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens], Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, O. Henry, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck. Stories include: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Rip van winkle; the spectre bridegroom; Young Goodman Brown; Rappaccini's daughter; the fall of the house of usher; the gold bug; the pit and the pendulum; the cask of amontillado; captain kidd"s money; Benito cereno; the lightning-rod man; the diamond lens; the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras county; the L1,000,000 bank note; the man that corrupted Hadley burg; the luck of roaring camp; the outcasts of poker flat; Tennessee's partner; an occurrence at owl creek bridge; a horseman in the sky; the damned thing; the turn of the screw; the jolly corner; the courting of sister wisby; the Hilton's holiday; the love-philtre of ikey schoenstein; the gift of the magi; Tobin's palm; springtime a la carte; the furnished room; "fox-in-the-morning"; the Rembrandt; the moving finger; the recovery; Maggie - a girl of the streets; the open boat; the upturned face; the clemency of the court; Lou, the prophet; a night at greenway court; the wite silence; the son of the wolf; the men of forty-mile; in a far country; Babylon revisited; a rose for Emily; big two hearted river; flight.